Sometimes You Meet a Player in WoW, who is a Complete Enigma

Sometimes you meet a player in WoW, who is a complete enigma – I met one such player a few days ago.

Here’s the story of the stag-druid.

Noelani and I were questing in Krasarang Wilds in this area where you have to release Alliance slaves, kill a number of enemies and pick up relics on the ground – a classic combination of quest types.

A druid appears in stag form, he is standing slightly behind us watching while we kill several mogu. We wonder if he is waiting for us to clear the area so he can release the Horde slaves. A little cheeky really, so we sit down and pretend to eat.

The stag-druid then wiggles around on the spot – also known as key-turning. After a minute of idling, he finally decides to attack an enemy and thus he proceeds to walk right up to it and spam wrath – in his natural tauren form.

Odd.

We also see him auto-attacking in bear form and melee hitting with his staff. Stag-druid practically has no modus operandi and seems to prefer standing around in stag form in between combat. After he has killed a few mobs slooowly in these multitude of ways, he gets attacked while again observing us as a stag. He wiggles and wiggles, but ends up dying. We then help him kill a couple of mogu a few times, but he never appears to be looting anything nor actually progressing on his quests.

It becomes clear this person is not waiting specifically for us to clear the area, in fact we have no clue what he is doing. We find him later in Valley of the Four Winds brutally beating a fox to death with the staff again. I know it was a Nesingwary quest, but still.

Maybe stag-druid had gained some confidence at this point, because we then see him fighting four mushan beasts at the same time. Stag-druid struggles and of course one of those stealthy foxes comes out and attacks him. Maybe it was karmic, maybe it was just bad luck or maybe stag-druid has always been a tree-hugger and not a killer beast!

Clearly overwhelmed, he backs closer and closer to the edge of the lake nearby and falls down the hill and dies on the bank on top of a turtle. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Again stag-druid appears to be a mystery – he was popping cooldowns so he couldn’t be completely clueless. He also used bear form, which is the logical thing to do in this situation, but he would also go out of it to cast wrath and stick fight…

Noelani logs a Horde character and travels to his location, entering a scene where stag-druid is actually about to die again. Noelani tries to strike up a conversation with the intention of offering assistance, but stag-druid stops replying after thanking Noelani for saving him.

We take a look at his armory. It shows him as being mono specced resto and geared accordingly (no respecs), but having only done 15 dungeon ever (never raided). He likes pet battles and has maxed professions. He has waved eight times, hugged twice, but never cheered or laughed – aw! The armory also reveals he has his own guild with 35 members, eight of which are his own, including two level 90 dual-specced characters, which look straight-forward and conventional, though not impeccable.

It’s strange seeing how the armory can be used as a tool for drawing out a whole player-profile. Thinking about this, I’ve often felt like the armory was able to tell people a lot of things about me, that I actually didn’t think were any of their business. Anyways…

It was in the middle of the night on a Saturday, so it could be anyone. I like to imagine this extremely committed, yet young and inexperienced player. Someone who doesn’t have their own account, but they know their relative’s password and they snuck out of bed after everyone was asleep, turned on the computer and beat a fox to death with a stick!

In a way, I admire it. Even though playing is so hard, every mob is a challenge, dying over and over, the guy kept going – like an ironman!

Our son has a gnome mage and he will do some of that random stuff.. like run in and melee mobs. The toon is one that used to be mine and that I leveled to 90.. mainly because since he’s four, we didn’t want to be rezzing his toon every five minutes as he ran around exploring everything.

I like to imagine it was a young player, and he/she was simply getting great enjoyment out of simply being a cool-looking stag and just watching other players go about their business, which I imagine might be a fascinating experience for a young person. Nice story! :D

As someone who has young children, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a young child on a parent’s account. At least old enough to reply politely but maybe told not to talk to strangers. One can only wonder! But family accounts are quite common – I am curious as to what was going on! And as for armory… well I know only too well how useful it can be as an investigative tool :D

“At least old enough to reply politely but maybe told not to talk to strangers”
Aah! Good point, would explain why he was so happy and thankful to be rescued, but also perhaps didn’t know quite how to decline the help offered.

That’s what I was thinking, some kind of Ironstag, lol! But I’ll bet it was the child sneaking on the parents account. I’ve had house guests that rode my poor Cat around Darnassus and then left her to drown in the water.

Ironstag!!!!
I just HAD to check the armory to see if any druid had chosen that name. Four people in the EU with that name – BUT! none are druids…
Doing the Ironstag-challenge, oh man.. that would be hardcore!

OK the bit about s/he dying on the back of a turtle was hilarious but I also think it was a kid who was just having some fun. I guess we’ll never know :)
I also drowned on my druid recently because I had alt-tabbed a little too long :P

Aww, what a cute story! I agree with what most others have said; it was a young kid in control of a parent or relatives account. Gosh, that death on top of the turtle is absolutely priceless. Does it make me a bad person for laughing out loud when I read that bit?